Bob Collins
By way of the St. Paul Issues Forum, our attention has been called to an article in the Mac Weekly, the Independent student newspaper at Macalester College, which details a police raid on a student’s room last month.
According to the application for the warrant filed by the SPPD, the search was part of an effort to find a person who, along with two others, damaged a Minneapolis police car in a group that split off from the main group of protesters on September 1. The squad car, with its shattered glass and flattened tires, became one of the most well known images from the RNC protests.
Using photographs of protesters breaking the car’s windows, police drew a general description of the suspects. One of the vandals was dressed in blue jeans with a torn right pant leg, a black shirt and a black head wrap, a description fitting many members of the Macalester chapter of Students for a Democratic Society during the protest.
The article says some students at the school are unhappy that it doesn’t have a policy on handling police searches and hasn’t offered legal assistance to students.
Meanwhile the retrial of David McKay, charged with attempting to make Molotov cocktails during the RNC, begins in St. Paul. A deadlocked jury forced the declaration of a mistrial earlier this year. The case is being followed particularly closely in Austin, where McKay was said to be part of 8 activists who headed to St. Paul for the convention.
